Christchurch Photo Hunt 2015
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‘Arrivals and Departures — The Journeys that Have Shaped Us’. Take ownership of your city’s heritage: send in some of your old photos to help grow a photographic archive. You could win a tablet or eReader. Copies of photograph entries may be displayed in libraries and uploaded to Kete Christchurch.
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| Dancing with the devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the brink by Juliana BarbassaReturning to Brazil in 2010 after two decades away, journalist Juliana Barbassa observed her homeland's upheaval as it prepared to host two major world sporting events: the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Focusing on Rio de Janeiro, Barbassa describes the city's history as well as the problems it continues to face (slums, drugs, corruption, pollution, etc.). Barbassa also shares stories about herself and her family as well as her fascinating conversations with everyone from taxi drivers to environmentalists, gang members, politicians, and police officers. If you want to know more about Brazilian society and culture, this in-depth look will give you plenty of insight. |
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| Deep South: four seasons on back roads by Paul TherouxFor over 50 years, acclaimed novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux has travelled all over the world. But in his latest journey, he turned his eyes to a region of his home country he wanted to know better. Travelling to various Southern states (including Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina) on a variety of road trips, Theroux bypassed the big cities and gleaming towns. Instead, he focused his keen eye on smaller, rural towns, where he visited with people in churches, restaurants, corner stores, farms, and gun shows, and explored the culture and paradoxes of the region. Publishers Weekly calls The Deep South "Theroux's best outing in years." |
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The Ambassador's wife's tale
by Julia Miles
For 28 years, Julia was a 'diplomatic spouse', juggling a growing family while supporting the demands of one of the great Offices of State. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying, she reveals the truth of the realities of life as an Ambassador's wife, ranging from food shortages to terrorist incidents to rubbing shoulders with the Queen, Mrs Thatcher and George Best - and rubbing knees with Mikhail Gorbachev. Light-hearted in style, The Ambassador's Wife Tale has a serious core message: that the diplomatic wife stands centre stage as the drama of world affairs unfolds.
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The smallest continent: journeys through New Zealand landscapes
by Derek Grzelewski
Derek Grzelewski writes of his journeys through New Zealand. He discovers in these small islands a land very much like a continent in the diversity of its spaces and places, and the people who live, work and play there. Along the way, Grzelewski ranges across subjects as rich and varied as the landscape itself. There are stories of the people who shaped the country, of stargazing in the clear night skies of the Mackenzie Country, of flying remote mail routes or hunting for gold in the back country. You will also shape clay with potters, cycle forest trails, sled with snow dogs, swim with dolphins, wonder at whales; and this is just a glimpse of what's here in our country, this 'smallest continent'.
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Land of the midnight sun: Alexander's Arctic adventure
by Alexander Armstrong
This is a voyage that takes Alexander half way around the planet, experiencing many of its natural wonders and living alongside some of its more extraordinary people. Getting stuck in wherever he goes, he learns from the Marines how to survive wildly unpredictable weather and temperatures as low as minus 40 C, drives along a hair-raising 800-mile road that's a river in summer and takes a plunge in freezing Arctic waters. And that's all before wrestling Viking-style with a sporting legend called Eva as part of a traditional Icelandic winter festival. Combining adventure and humour, Land of the Midnight Sun is an entertaining travelogue that takes readers on an exhilarating journey to this rarely seen corner of the world.
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Cobra in the bath: adventures in less travelled lands
by Miles Morland
Miles Morland is an adventurer. He was born in India to a naval father and a glamorous mother once described as the 'most dangerous woman in India'. His parents divorced and Miles followed his mother to Tehran, which they had to leave in a hurry, and on to Baghdad, which they also had to leave in a hurry after a revolution. These years were filled with desert journeys, riots where he came within seconds of death, and adventures worthy of Kipling, after which he was sent to England for a 'proper' education. Later, following years of shouting down a Wall Street telephone, he threw in his job, bought a giant motorbike and set off to discover things in places others did not want to go. Deported at gunpoint from Romania, saved from assassination in Ethiopia by a lucky plane crash, riding an Enfield Bullet through Ooty, and following Che over the Andes Miles has a knack of finding trouble. Brilliantly observed and told with unique humour, Cobra in the Bath will have you crying with laughter and scared out of your wits.
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Wildboy: an epic trek around the coast of New Zealand
by Brando Yelavich
Fast going off the rails and hanging out with the wrong crowd, Brando Yelavich, a plucky 20-year-old from Auckland's North Shore, decided he needed to change his life. He needed a mission. He was going to walk around New Zealand.
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On the Nile: in the golden age of travel
by Andrew Humphreys
Since Antony and Cleopatra honeymooned on the Nile on a gilded barge, visitors to Egypt have taken to the river as the best way to experience the country's wonders. In the late 19th centuryThomas Cook revolutionized the journey with a fleet of specially built paddle steamers. For the next sixty years these 'floating palaces' carried the aristocratic, moneyed, and adventurous of international society of the time. Using period photography, and colourful vintage posters and advertising material, this book tells the story of the people, the places, and the boats, from pioneering Nile travellers like Amelia Edwards and Lucie Duff Gordon, through to famed later passengers, such as Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and, of course, Agatha Christie, whose staging of a death on the Nile only added to the allure.
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Safari: a memoir of a worldwide travel pioneer
by Geoffrey Kent
In this breathtaking travel memoir and adventure guide, the legendary founder of the world's premier luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, Geoffrey Kent takes readers on a whirlwind tour around the globe, sharing his best-kept secrets and the story of his success and his life.
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The way a river went: following the Volga through the heart of Russia
by Thom Wheeler
Thom Wheeler is not a man to be put off by the prospect of an uncharted, impractical or downright dangerous journey. Having accidentally introduced his old school friend Vicky to Dmitry, the Russian love of her life, at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Thom decides to travel to their wedding in Astrakhan in the most obvious and straightforward way: by following the Volga river, from its source over 1,000 miles inland, all the way to the Caspian Sea and a party to remember.
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Travelling with Famous Novelists |
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Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the invention of modern celebrity
by David M. Friedman
Oscar Wilde was hired to go to America to promote a Gilbert & Sullivan work by presenting lectures on interior decorating. But Wilde had his own business plan. He would go to promote himself. And he did, travelling some 15,000 miles and visiting 150 American cities as he created a template for fame creation that still works today. An account of the literary master's landmark 1882 American tour explores his "nine principles of fame creation," describing his extensive visits, lectures and audiences with such figures as Walt Whitman, Ulysses S. Grant and Jefferson Davis.
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Writers' houses: where great books began
by Nick Channer
Part armchair travel, part reference, this is a journey into Britain's impressive literary and architectural heritage and an exploration of how beloved authors drew inspiration from their homes. Many of these leading writers lived, worked, and found inspiration in a variety of houses the length and breadth of the land. Offering insight into the daily routines of popular authors, this book looks at several authors' homes, examining how their surroundings affected their works.
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Goldeneye: where Bond was born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica
by Matthew Parker
From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica's north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here. Fleming adored the Jamaica he had discovered, at the time an imperial backwater that seemed unchanged from the glory days of the empire. Amid its stunning natural beauty, the austerity and decline of post-war Britain could be forgotten. For Fleming, Jamaica offered the perfect mixture of British old-fashioned conservatism and imperial values, alongside the dangerous and sensual: the same curious combination that made his novels so appealing, and successful.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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